Obama extends fraud fight

As part of his current blitz to pass health care reform, President Barack Obama announced a plan last week to root out fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, a move timed to reassure a skeptical public that he is just as worried about wasteful health care spending as he is about covering more than 30 million uninsured Americans.

“Nowhere is reform more needed than when it comes to our health care system. Nowhere, nowhere,” Obama said during a rally outside St. Louis on Wednesday. “The health care system has billions of dollars that should go to patient care, and they’re lost each and every year to fraud, to abuse, to massive subsidies that line the pockets of the insurance industry.”

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The president is expanding a program that employs private auditors to find improper payments — those made for incorrect amounts, made for the wrong reasons or paid to the wrong people. The auditors are paid based on the amount of money they return to the government.

Last year, the White House said, Medicare and Medicaid made $54 billion worth of improper payments. The administration estimates the audit program will return at least $2 billion over the next three years.

Obama’s efforts follow those of a long line of Republican and Democratic presidents who promised to save taxpayers money by cutting fraud, waste and abuse in the government insurance programs. The sentiment is popular because it has bipartisan support and doesn’t threaten entrenched health industry interests that benefit from the spending.

“Waste, fraud and abuse have been the favorite thing to promise first because it’s a way of promising cost control while not doing any of the painful stuff,” said Len Nichols, a former senior health policy adviser in the Clinton administration. The method is “as old as the Bible,” he said.

The issue is also part of Obama’s political positioning. Republicans talked a lot about cutting waste and fraud during last month’s bipartisan summit on health care reform, and Obama noted it was an area on which the two parties could agree. Moving to aggressively slash fraud is part of the president’s ongoing effort to demonstrate that he is listening to Republican ideas and incorporating them into his health care plan.

While the GOP applauded Obama’s announcement, it didn’t crack Republicans’ united opposition to Democratic reforms.

“I support rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. This new proposal from the president may be worthy of bipartisan support, but why can’t we crack down on fraud without a Big Government takeover of health care?” asked House Republican leader John Boehner.